China: being 'The Times' special correspondence from China in the years 1857-58 ... With corrections and additions by the author, G. W. Cooke

Preface

TO THE FIRST EDITION. The letters collected in this volume have been received with so much favour by the general public that I am desirous they should live a little longer in the world's notice. Whether they have any value in a literary point of view I am not careful to inquire : I shall value them only by the effect they may have upon the minds of my countrymen ; and their success towards this object must be entirely due to that great organ of public opinion which created them, and gave them currency. It is, to my thinking, no small privilege to have been allowed to take a rather prominent part in the most noteworthy enterprise of our age. If the treaty which has just been concluded open the interior of China to Western commerce, it will open it also to Christianity. How long it may be before these two elements of civilization leaven the whole lump, we must not rashly reckon ; but it is impossible that our merchants and our missionaries can course up and down the inland waters of this great region, and traffic in their cities and preach in their villages, without wearing at the crust of a Chinaman's stoical and sceptical conceit.

The whole present system in China is a hollow thing, with a hard, brittle surface : we try in vain to scratch it ; but some day a happy blow will shiver it. It will all go together. A Chinaman has no idea of surrendering a part to save the rest. The only question with him is, how long can it be resisted 1 how can it be evaded ? The shrewdest among the

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. VI Chinese feel that everything depends upon a steady and unyielding resistance to change. The king of Cochin, whose work I shall cite hereafter, is in accord with all the governing classes of China in believing that concession is always fatal. The)' who have intercourse with the mercantile and emigrating classes among the Chinese may think they see progress at work ; but the brokers who deal with British merchants, and the emigrants who come back from Australia or California, have no influence upon the government of China. Yeh, and men like Yeh, are the only exponents of imperial policy. It was this knowledge which induced me to sacrifice so much in order to be able to study the character of one great Chinese statesman. They who read the anecdotes I collected during my voyage in company with this important, but not agreeable personage, may see why it is the Chinese go on using bows and arrows, and exploding rusty match locks.

It is plain that Yeh is the Eldon of China — Eldon intensified, and omnipresent and omnipotent in Chinese official life. It is " bows and arrows, and the wisdom of our ancestors " — " no barbarians, and the Chinese constitu tion." It is plain that young China, from Singapore or California, and even middle-aged China, in the person of the Howquas and Minquas, can do nought against this obese old China. Lord Elgin was well rid of Yeh. He must be the despair of all diplomacy. He is one of those things to which nature has given great inert force, and no other power. He is like a landslip or a fallen avalanche, blocking up a pass. You must tunnel through it, or you must wait till it melts away ; push it from your path you cannot. It is his duty and his destiny to lie there, and there he will lie. That " Taoli," of which we read so much, is, among its many

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. VII meanings, not quite destiny, but it is something very like it. It often approaches to that rooted notion which un tutored minds mistake for conscience, — an ill-defined and fanciful rule of right, which they are prepared to enforce by the bloodiest tyranny over the weak, and by passive resist ance to the strong. I have, in these letters, introduced no elaborate essay upon Chinese character. It is a great omission. No theme could be more tempting, no subject could afford wider scope for ingenious hypothesis, profound generalization, and trium phant dogmatism. Every small critic will, probably, utterly despise me for not having made something out of such opportunities. The truth is, that I have written several very fine characters for the whole Chinese race, but having the misfortune to have the people under my eye at the same time with my essay, they were always saying something or doing something which rubbed so rudely against my hypothesis, that in the interest of truth I burnt several successive letters.

I may add that I have often talked over this matter with the most eminent and candid sinologues, and have always found them ready to agree with me as to the impossibility of a Western mind forming a conception of Chinese character as a whole. These difficulties, however, occur only to those who know the Chinese practically : a smart writer, entirely ignorant of the subject, might readily strike off a brilliant and antithetical analysis, which should leave nothing to be desired but Truth. Some day, perhaps, we may acquire the necessary know ledge to give to each of the glaring inconsistencies of a Chinaman's mind its proper weight and influence in the general mass. At present, I at least must be content to avoid strict definitions, and to describe a Chinaman by his most prominent qualities.

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. The Chinese philosophers teach that man is born with a perfect nature ; that is to say, that men at their .birth are by nature radically good. " In this they all approximate, but in practice they widely diverge. For if not educated, the natural character is changed, and surrounding circumstances corrupt the perfect intelligence." I think I have said in these letters, that the Chinese, like the Greeks, have a ceremonial religion and a thoughtful philosophy. The emperor and his officials, following the ancient traditions of the Chinese dynasties, adore Heaven and Earth ; the people burn incense to the Buddhist idols, and all worship their ancestors. But in their universities and in their public examinations, which are the only portals to rank or official power, they teach no superstition. The Chinaman can bow in the temple of Buddha, or join in the Latin Romish mass, sacrifice to Heaven and Earth, or sit in an American conventicle, or jump through the fire with the priests of perfect reason.

Hauling the god of rain out in the sunshine, to make him feel how parched the ground is, is a practice which shows the cynical half-belief with which the Chinaman regards his idols. Their Confucianism comprehends no immortality in the soul, no future rewards and punishments ; it is a bare groundwork upon which any superstition may be embroidered. I was visiting a Buddhist temple once in company with a remarkably intelligent Chinaman, a teacher in one of the consulates, and who could speak a little English. While we were there, a military mandarin of no very high rank, but a Tartar, came in and burnt a little incense. Having made his kotoo to the god of war, he was going out, when he saw us, and availed himself of the license common throughout China of introducing himself. In the usual form, he asked my " honourable age," then my " honourable name," then

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. IX the name of my "honourable nation;" all which queries were duly answered through the interpreter. This is generally the full scope of a Chinaman's courtesies ; but when I had, as in politeness bound, reciprocated that question, I saw that my new friend was inclined to have a little badinage with the stranger. He asked me, " How large is your country t " and I answered, " The British empire is about three times as large as the eighteen provinces of China." The interpreter looked incredulous, but translated. The Tartar evidently thought I had told him a very tall lie. Then he asked me whether our land was fruitful. I answered, " It was neither so rich as China nor so poor as Tartary." My friend was a little nettled, and, as the Chinese 'nearly always do when they want to be uncivil, he asked why the barbarians do not wear tails.

The answer I give a Chinaman when he asks this question is, that we have never been conquered by the Tartars ; but as this would not do with a Tartar, I replied, pointing to the gods, " We are of the race of your gods, and you see they wear no tails." I thought I had said rather a smart thing, but the mandarin tapping the plaster head and belly of the hideous pot bellied idol, asked, " And are you made of the same materials as your ancestors 1 " Both the celestials laughed. He had not hesitated a moment to extricate himself at the expense of the god to which he had just been sacrificing, and I found I had " caught a Tartar." One of the Jesuit missionaries tells us a very similar anecdote illustrative of a Chinaman's small respect for his gods. Seeing a priest smoking his pipe before the image of Xam-ti, he remonstrated with him for want of respect to his own idol.

" Nay," said the priest, " Xam-ti smokes his jossticks (incense), and is glad enough to get them, why should he think it an indignity to him that I smoke my tobacco 1 " X

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. The Genoese have a proverb, " He lies like a tooth drawer ; " no doubt a Greek, or a tooth-drawer, or an Italian picture-dealer will tell lies ; but he knows that he is doing a mean, dirty thing, and that he at least ought to be ashamed if he is found out. He knows that lying is in the abstract a public offence reprobated by all men. John Chinaman is taught no such sentiment. With him a par ticular lie is a particular offence to the party lied to ; but lying itself is a lawful thing. It is with him what a smart repartee is with us. The immediate recipient may wince and retort ; but the world applauds, and the sayer of the bon-mot chuckles. John Smith assures you that leather has risen to such a fabulous price that he is obliged to charge you five pounds for a pair of boots, aud is at that price considerably out of pocket.

Now you know, and John Smith knows, that this is a monosyllabic mistake ; but if you roughly tell John Smith he is a liar, he will infallibly raise his tradesman fist and fell you. So in weaker degree Simonides or Mendosa would feel it necessary to affect to be unjustly treated if you call them habitual liars. But if you say the same thing to a Chinaman, you arouse in him no sense of outrage, no sentiment of degradation. He does not deny the fact. His answer is, " I should not dare to lie to your excellency." To say to a Chinaman, " You are an habitual liar, and you are meditating a lie at this moment," is like saying to an Englishman, " You are a confirmed punster, and I am satisfied you have some horrible pun in your head at this moment." Much has been said and written about Chinese politeness.

There is no nation in which in public places you see habitually so little of it. The Chinese peasant has no notion of courtesy. He never makes you a salutation in passing ; he never moves out of your way, or even deflects from, his

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. XI straight course, without looking to see whether you will get out of his way. The higher classes keep all their politeness for great occasions. For those occasions they have a ritual of ceremonies, and this ritual is a sharp satire upon their daily practice. As their stage plays recall the events of extinct dynasties, so their ceremonial politeness are histrionic representations of extinct virtues. Humanity, self-denial, and that true courtesy which teaches Western nations that it is a part of personal dignity to respect the feelings of others, is in China dead in fact, and alive only in pantomime. The life and state papers of a Chinese statesman, like the Con fessions of B,ousseau, abound in the finest sentiments and the foulest deeds. He cuts off ten thousand heads, and cites a passage from Mencius about the sanctity of human life.

He pockets the money given him to repair an embankment, and thus inundates a province; and he deplores the land lost to the cultivator of the soil. He makes a treaty which he secretly declares to be only a deception for the moment, and he exclaims against the crime of perjury. The meaner sort imitate at a distance the same qualities. They will put you to death if you innocently cause a death, yet they will not draw a struggling man out of the water, because it would spoil such a capital joke. A Chinaman laughs when he tells you of the death of his most intimate friend — I mean acquaintance, for John Chinaman does not know what friendship means. Mr. Meadows, who is always an unwilling witness against the Chinese, tells us of a Chinaman who laughed until he held his sides, when telling of the funny death of his most constant companion.

Yet there is one virtue left in China. We say of an unhealthy man, that he is " run to belly ; " of an unpro ductive crop, " that it is run to stalk : " so Chinese morality suffers emaciation in all its parts but one, in order to swell

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. and fatten that one to unnatural magnitude. It expands a single duty and a single sentiment into a code of morals and a system of religion. The only god of a Chinaman is our fat friend Paterfamilias. If the fact of paternity operated to purify a man's mind and make him just to all men, this would be as good a heathenism as we could hope to find. But when opportunities osier, a Chinaman prefers to " sacrifice to his ancestors " other people's goods, and it is consistent with all experience that the same in dividual may be a most obedient son and a most noxious ruffian. We are told by a received authority on Chinese ethics, that the morality of the Chinese is the morality of the Decalogue, and that in Confucius we find the fundamental Christian command, " Do unto all men that ye would that they should do unto you."

Both these positions are, to speak mildly of them, inaccurate. Whatever may be twisted from the books by Western commentators, a Chinaman has no notion of duty beyond the sphere of his own family, wherein, for form's sake, the prince is included. Of course he knows that it is dangerous to steal or to commit murder, and in commercial transactions you may trust to a China man's knowledge that honesty is the best policy, and that he must not " lose face " among those with whom he deals ; but I cannot find that robbery or piracy is looked upon as a disgraceful professionalthat a man in high office who has embezzled a few millions of taels is a disreputable person. We have just seen an instance in one of our own settlements, of a Tartar who was supposed to have accumu lated four hundred thousand taels by unscrupulous extor tion : the Chinese government took away ' two hundred thousand, and removed him to another province. This man is a useful sponge, to be squeezed occasionally, — not a

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. XIII discreditable person to be punished and dismissed. The offences which the law of nature points out as crimes are not in Chinese ethics offences against Heaven or against the state, but only offences against the individual. No Chinaman ever yet thought that by stealing or bearing false witness he was offending against the King of heaven or Buddha. So with respect to the suggestion that the great precept of Christianity is to be found in Confucius. The Chinese philosopher goes only half-way ; he says, " Do not do to others what you would not have done to you." Our great Teacher comprehends in one short sentence an admonition against offences, and a complete code of duties. The Chinese philosopher stops short when he has forbidden crimes. It is not always safe to foretell a man's actions by reference to his theoretical opinions ; and when I am tempted to speak of Chinamen as practically destitute of honour and honesty, I am warned from my general proposition by the facts that Chinamen have been found to sell their lives for the benefit of their family, and that large sums of money are annually intrusted by European merchants to Chinamen, who go up the country to purchase teas and silks upon com missions, which are always faithfully executed.

We must not, however, expect to find that in a people educated as the Chinese have been, those higher principles of conduct which govern us are prevalent or to be counted on. We must not in dealing with them fall into the error of sup posing that words are things, or that our morality is their morality. Material guarantees and present force, or obvious self-interest, are the only bonds that will certainly bind them. I am tempted to quote a state paper confirmatory of some of the foregoing observations. It was found among Yeh's archives, and is a report addressed to the emperor in 1842, by Kei-ying, at that time engaged in negotiations with

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. the English. It throws some light upon the nature of Chinese civilization, so far as that word may be supposed to comprehend good faith and a respect for women. Kei-ying says : — " Right, as it doubtless is, to act on them [the barbarians] by fair dealings, it is yet more needful to keep them in hand by stratagem. " It is the wont of the barbarians to make much of their women. Whenever the visitor is a person of distinction, the wife is sure to come out to receive him. In the case of the American barbarian Parker, and the French barbarian Lagrene, for instance, both of them have brought their foreign wives with them ; and when your slave has gone to their foreign residence upon business, these foreign women have appeared and saluted him. Your slave was confounded and ill at ease, while they, on the contrary, were greatly delighted at the honour done them.

" The truth is, that it is not possible to regulate the customs of the Western state by the ceremonial of China, and to break out in rebuke, while it would do nothing to cleave their dulness, might chance to give rise to suspicion and ill-feeling. With the English barbarians the ruler is a female ; with the American and French a male. The English and French rulers reign for life, the American is elected by his countrymen, and is changed once in four years ; and when he retires from his throne, he takes rank with the non-official classes. " With a people so uncivilized as they are, blindly unin telligent in styles and modes of address, a tenacity of forms in official correspondence such as would duly take place, the superior above and the inferior below, would be a riving of the tongue and a blistering of the lips. The only course, in that case, would be to affect to be deaf to it. Instead,

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. XV therefore, of a contest about empty names, — which can be of no practical utility, — it has been held better to pass by minor details while following out a great policy." Upon this report there is an imperial comment, written by the vermilion pencil : — " It was the only proper arrangement to be made. We understand the whole question." The shrewd Tartar who made this report to his emperor takes a much more sensible view of the proper method of maintaining intercourse between the authorities of the two nations than has been generally taken by our officials. It is the policy which I advocated in these letters long before I had seen the document just quoted. If we had sometimes " affected to be deaf," — if we had avoided " contests about empty names," — if we had passed by minor details and followed out a great policy, our dealings with this country would not be so one-sided as they now are.

The Chinese ignorantly believe that their true policy is to sell and not to buy, and that policy they have hitherto, to our great incon venience, succeeded in carrying out. This paper may also instruct us that we have very much underrated the knowledge possessed by the Chinese of foreign countries. The normal Chinese mandarin — whereof Yeh is the living type— may be contentedly ignorant of everything but his own vague and barren philosophy ; but men like Kei-ying always crop up when occasion calls them forth ; and although we do not, at present, know them by name, we may guess from antecedent facts that there is a reform party even at Pekin. A very eminent Chinese statesman, with whom we often came in contact, collected and published, some years ago, a universal geography, which is described to me as by no means contemptible in its execution.

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. XVI It is a common belief among the English, that the Chinese are ill-informed as to the events that pass upon the coast, and that the officials conceal all their reverses from the emperor. The papers which have fallen into our hands at the capture of Yeh will disabuse us of many errors on the subject of China, and of this among others. Mr. Wade is at present, with laborious zeal, sinking shafts and driving adits through this formidable mass : but awaiting these more perfect revelations, I cannot resist citing in this place a royal work, which shows how closely a king of Cochin-China reads his history, and how little good his studies do him. Yuen Fuh-siuen, Mr. Wade explains, ascended the throne of Cochin-China in January, 1841 ; receiving his investiture the following year from the empeic >r of China, according to custom.

In the sixth year of his reign he completed a " Summary of the Histories of the Dynasties by the hand of Royalty." This is very succinct. The story of from thirty to forty centuries preceding the invasion of the Manchus is packed into two chapters, of some forty pages each ; the proceedings of the Manchus themselves up to 1847 occupy the third and last chapter ; and it is worthy of remark, that two and a half of its forty-two pages are devoted to a condemnation of the errors the royal author conceives the court of Peking to have committed in over-condescension to the English barbarians in 1816 and 1842. The book is written with the usual pretension of like works in China. It is somewhat in the manner of Bayle's Dictionary ; the chronicle proper, in elaborate style and large text ; the commentary, in double columns of small type, and more diffuse.

The copy in Mr. Wade's possession was obtained in Cochin-China by a French missionary, about the beginning of 1849, two years after the death of the royal writer.

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. XVII After an unusually detailed account of the serious attempt made on Peking, in Kia K'ing's reign, by the White Lily faction, the chronicle proceeds : — Text. — " What do we hear 1 An envoy coming in from the outer nation Yingkili [England], deceives the emperor ; presented, he keeps his person erect, and departs without performing any obeisance. Is this the form of things that -should be 1 Commentary.— " la the 20th year of Kia K'ing [1815-10], an envoy, with tribute from England, arrived at Tientsin. Sugogheh and Kwang Hwui were commanded to signify to him that the emperor was pleased to bestow on him a banquet. They desired him to return thanks for it, falling on his knees thrice, and striking his head nine times, as the rite requires ; which done he was to enter the capital. The envoy refused.

Sugogheh and his colleague attempted to constrain him, but did not succeed, and without representation ou the subject brought him on at once. When he reached the capital, Hoshiht'ai was commanded to exercise him in the ceremony [sc, of prostration]; but the •envoy said he was quite perfect in it aud when presented would be sure to be able to perform it according to the rite. Hoshiht'ai, believing his words, hastened to apply to the emperor for permission to introduce him. But when the <lay came on which the emperor desired him to appear, the envoy made no obeisance [or did not salute, did not pay his respects], but departed. The emperor thrice in -quired for him, and Hoshiht'ai thrice replied that he was ill. The emperor, enraged, commanded a physician to visit the envoy; but the envoy was already gone some distance.

He was pursued to Kwang Tung, and there escorted on board the ship in which he returned to his country. Now •the emperor of China is the common ruler of the empire ; b

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. England is a single, small barbarian state : and was it the form of things that should be, that when the envoy of the latter gave himself such airs as these, the government of China, so far from being able to punish his crime, should actually go the length of escorting him home 1 Herein we find the origin of the pride and intractability of the bar barians of the seas. Text. — " The effect of this was bequeathed to the pre sent'day. Titu Kwang being emperor, the Ying [English] barbarians crossed the sea, and made incursions into seven provinces. Widely and madly did they kill and slay. During three years they were not suppressed. So far from it, there was a tendering of bribes and treating for peace ; a cutting off of territory to be presented to people. In what respect did this differ from the 'humble words and rich gifts ' of Klu Tsung, of the Sung dynasty, to the Kin [Tar tars] ?

And will not the feebleness of his power in the 25th year of Jin Tsung, of the Tsing dynasty, bring discredit upon his predecessors of the Tsing ? Commentary. — " In the commerce of the English with the men of the Tsing [the Chinese], their only profit was on opium. The men of Tsing had been much injured by it; families had been broken up, estates ruined, life lost, health destroyed ; so great was its mischief. In the 20th year of Tau Kwang, the emperor of the Tsing issued an interdict against it, ordaining that offenders should be put to death. and their property confiscated. Lin Tsih-sii was made governor-general of the Two Kwang to take order with the English barbarians, and to put a stop to the opium, trade. Tsih-sii [sc, Lin] from the time of his arrival showed himself pure and determined. Of the English barbarians he merely demanded the whole of their opium, which, when he had received, he destroyed, and he made

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. XIX a prisoner of their chief, thinking by these means to insure the submission of the outer nations. The English barbarians, however, were proud and intractable, and, excelling in fighting on the water, they put to sea in vessels of war. They first invaded Kwang Tung, giving out that the pro perty of English merchants had been seized without a cause, and demanding full compensation. The refusal of the men of Tsing brought on war ; Kishen replaced Lin Tsih-sii, who, for receiving the opium, and seizing the bar barian chief, was found guilty of causing war in a frontier jurisdiction. Kishen loved money, and having taken bribes of the English barbarians, agreed in the first place to give them a portion of territory, and privily entertained rela tions with the outer barbarians. The matter coming to light, the emperor of the Tsing refused his sanction ; seized Kishen and put him to death,* and the English barbarians, alleging a breach of faith in respect of the ter ritory set apart for them, invaded the country in great force, spreading like a flood over the sevens provinces of Fuh Kien, Cheh Kiang, Shan Tung, Chih Li, Kiang Su, and Shing King [Manchuria], Ting-hai, Chin-hai, Niug-po.

Cha-pu, Chusan, and the Tiger's Gate [Bocca Tigris], were lost, one after the other. The admiral Kwan T'ieu-piei, the governor-general Yiikien, and some tens of high officers besides, fell in battle. The calamities of war lasted three years without any one being able to bring matters to an end ; everything was in the greatest confusion, when, as a last resource, Uipu, Kiying, and Niukien proposed to the emperor of the Tsing to allow trade at Kwang-chau [Can- * Kishen was sentenced to death, but lived to rise and fall once and again. He died at last in 1855, waging war against the T'ai P'ing insurgents in Kiang Su. + Seven including Kwang Tung above named. We did not invada Shan Tung, Chih Li, or Manchuria. b XX

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. ton], Fuh-chau, Hia-mun [Amoy], and Shang-hai as before, and to give Hongkong to the English barbarians for ever. These further extorted 21,000,000 dollars as compensation iu full for their merchandise, and their expenses for all the years that troops had been employed, before they would treat of peace. The emperor of the Tsing, having no alternative but to consent to what they required, engaged to pay the full amount of the compensation in three annual instalments, during the years kwei-mau [1844], kiah-shiii [1845], and yih-tsz' [1846]. They then went so far as to exact a record of his assent in the handwriting of the em peror of the Tsing ; and though their language was most arrogant and disrespectful, the emperor of the Tsing stooped to accede to everything they demanded. " In what then did his course, as above, differ from the ' humble ivords and rich gifts' of his majesty Kau, of the Sung dynasty, to the Kin [Tartars] ?